We have now been in Japan a solid 3 months. We arrived on August 14 and today is Wednesday, November 23. (Okay it’s actually Nov. 30 now. I’m so behind.) I am typing this on the airplane to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The kids have a Fall break before the next trimester begins. They are off school from today, Wednesday, and do not return until Tuesday, November 29. This coincides with Thanksgiving break back in the US. I was hoping someone from abroad would come visit during this time since the Fall tree colors are so beautiful but no one could make it. So we are flying out instead. We took the cats to a pet hotel (in Japanese it’s peh-toe…
Ishibashi
On Tuesday, September 13, John and I went on an exploratory trip. We decided to take the train from the Minoh Station to a nearby train stop. We picked Ishibashi. I looked up Ishibashi and it means literally, stone bridge. Ishi is stone and bashi (or also hashi) means bridge. The famous Japanese company Bridgestone Tires was in fact named after it’s founder, Shojiro Ishibashi. Interesting! When we arrived at Ishibashi we wandered around and came upon another bike parking place. This one had double decker parking for getting more bikes into a small area. It’s so clever how they have figured out how to maximize the space constraints here. I have also seen car parking with this type of…
Shirahama Beach
Today, Saturday, September 10, is exactly 4 weeks since we got on the plane and left America. We are headed to a beach called Shirahama this morning. It is a resort town located on the south coast of Wakayama Prefecture, about 2 hours and 30 minutes away from Minoh. This is going to be a feet to the fire, 2.5 hour drive down the coast for John! We are going with four other families in a caravan of four cars. Avalon is going to ride in her friend Haruna’s car. Before leaving our meeting place we carefully exchanged Google Map information, contact numbers, filled up the gas tanks and put our caravan in order. We are second in the caravan line…